Feh. Dean and DeLuca de-livers.

If you have broadband you can get anything delivered anywhere, so the foodie bit dies away. I have a two-lives existence, and like it that way. It takes about two nights to adapt between city noises and country noises.

About five years ago I had to drive from Irvine to Encino on a Friday afternoon. Pretty stressful for a Manhattan boy like me and maybe for an OC boy like you.

I have lived in rural south Georgia, suburban Virginia, San Francisco, and rural Washington State, and there are things I really like about all of them. Not surprisingly, most of those things have to do with food.

I loved the variety of food in San Francisco, but I also loved the variety of food in rural areas. Although it is true that in south Georgia, you will mostly run into soul food and BBQ, there is a lot of variety within each of those groups, so I think there is a lot of fun to be had regardless.

Anyway, since San Francisco and Georgia sit on the opposite ends of very nearly every spectrum available to the human mind, I think I could probably live anywhere, although I think some of the plains states would stress me a bit, if I didn't live near a pond or lake.

I just left Chicago for Goshen, IN this weekend. Goshen is as small as it sounds. Famous for Amish and Mennonite farms.

I had the best tamale of my life there (I live in a largely Mexican town just outside of Chicago). Mexicans have really revitalized the area. Goshen had a Starbucks, a Panera, and a 10,000 Villages store. A small art gallery was expanding to include the storefront next door.

Still wouldn't want to live there. No Thai restaurants, and Italian restaurants in Indiana are kinda iffy. Good luck finding a good cheese counter. But they're were doing better than I expected.

Peoria, IL--Population 112,936. This on the heels of Krugman calling Youngstown, OH [Population 82,000] a "small town." No, guys--these aren't megacities, but they ain't small towns either. You really need to adjust your understandings; places like these won't have big-league sports or world-class symphonies, and they won't attract arena rock concerts, but they'll have most all of your everyday big-city amenities and provide even deviants like yourself a fair amount of companionship.

The most important factor me is if I can take a walk in the woods without getting into a car.

Strangely, one of the worst places I lived was a New England suburb on a dead-end street attached to a major route. If I wanted to take a walk, I first had to get in my car and drive for about 10 minutes to the nearest nature preserve.

Right now I'm in a small city, with a nearby park, a grocer a few blocks away, and easy access to the highway. It's about as ideal a situation as I can imagine in the U.S.

My father spent his final years in Peoria, so I got to know the place a bit from visits. What always struck me about it was how few non-overweight people there were. Body shapes ranged from chunky to massive blimphood.

I don't think I'd have enjoyed living there much despite my ability to hang out at home and ignore the wider world pretty well.

My mother lived in Roseville, CA, a similar-sized community near Sacramento. Totally different culture, but I don't think I'd want to live there either.

Peoria is not a small town. It is a pretty big city from my point of view. I grew up in one of the bigger regional cities in Minnesota, with a population of about half of Peoria. A small town is a couple thousand, the kind of place where you have to drive a half hour to do your grocery shopping. While you may have liked the tranquility of small towns when you drive through them, living there would probably drive you crazy Kevin.

A sad reality of American life is that the pleasures, such as they are, of small-town or even suburban life are very much diminished for a substantial number of Americans by a pervasive and corrosive racism.

Also, as inkadu says, it kind of sucks that we have to drive somewhere to walk in the woods.

having lived all over the midwest, from chicago to saint louis to omaha to kansas city, i have found a small city, like lawrence kansas, columbia, missouir, boulder, colorado is much more tolerable if it is a university city.

With broadband and decent weather (i.e., not Alaska, and not Phoenix, AZ, either), I could live anywhere.

The problem with rural America is your neighbors. I know of one situation where a pair of unfortunately souls thought they could live cheaply in a beautiful house in Tennesse until they were run out of town by their fundie neighbors. They made the mistake of inviting the neighbors to Creative Anachronism swordfights and similar "pagan" activities, and the town just decided they had to go. Long, ugly story, but they went.

Hey, guys, can we please stop repeating this latterly-invented myth that equates America with small, western or southern towns where by far mostly everybody is white and Republican? Do you realize how racist and xenophobic that sounds?

Around half or close to half of Americans live in "blue states."

I live in NJ and consider my area to be the heartland of America.

Swan,

I live in one of the bluest states in the country and since we've moved to the 'burbs, where 99% of the population is white, and 80% of the population votes Republican on a regular basis, my wife has been called a n****r to her face numerous times.

Do you live in a small town or suburb? Look out your window and tell me how many black faces you see.

Thersites and Steve Davis hit the nail on the head: small towns aren't bad in and of themselves. It's the people in them that make life tolerable (or not). When the people get all their views about other cultures from Fox News, then it's probably not a small town I'd want to live in. If anyone is familiar with Vermont, it's the difference between Milton and, say, Middlebury.

If there is a university (not Bob Jones) there will likely be an infusion of diversity of thought and lifestyle that go toward making a town more interesting and hopefully more tolerant toward other viewpoints.

I've lived in 8 states in the last 10 years. The only place I really hated was Dallas; but I found a way to be happy even there. Still, when I retire in a few years, I'm moving to Vancouver BC. Thanks to Republicans ruining everything, there isn't even one city or town in America with half the quality of life available in Vancouver, Toronto, or Montreal.

I live in suburban Virginia, and it is more racially/ethnically diverse than most any place I've ever been (and I've been around). Most big cities seem to be just black/white/hispanic. When I go to the grocery store here, it's like a visit to the UN.

Vincente,
That's interesting, about suburban VA. Do you think it's because you're near the capital, or is there some other reason?

The one thing I couldn't stand about a small town is anonymity - it can give you a great sense of freedom when you are somewhere where no one knows you.

I think a lot of it is just the surroundings that we're used to. I grew up in a small town in Ohio, and when I visit cities like New York, LA, and Chicago I always feel a touch claustrophobic; everyone packs in tight into smaller spaces since space is more valuable. I feel uncomfortable with people being excessively close to me. However, when I go home, I find it hard to adapt to the slowness of life... when it comes to things to do, there are a couple of dive bars. If you grow up in one extreme or the other, adjusting to the culture and pace of life (especially when you're young) of an incredibly different atmosphere can be really hard to do.

Please don't stereotype small towns as being conservative/Republican/fundie, etc. Certainly many are, but many are not. For the last eight years I've lived in a small town (about 12,000)in southern Wisconsin. Admittedly, there are mostly white faces here (although that is true of the state as a whole, which has a non-white population of about 11%.) I would point out, hoever, that in '04 we had a very high voter turnout, around 80%, and it went almost 3:1 for Kerry.

But the point made that small midwestern and southern towns really oughtn't be viewed as the "heartland of America" is dead on. Most people in this country live in big cities or their suburbs.

Please don't stereotype small towns as being conservative/Republican/fundie, etc. Certainly many are, but many are not. For the last eight years I've lived in a small town (about 12,000)in southern Wisconsin. Admittedly, there are mostly white faces here (although that is true of the state as a whole, which has a non-white population of about 11%.) I would point out, hoever, that in '04 we had a very high voter turnout, around 80%, and it went almost 3:1 for Kerry.

But the point made that small midwestern and southern towns really oughtn't be viewed as the "heartland of America" is dead on. Most people in this country live in big cities or their suburbs.

thersites,

I live in a very nice neighborhood in a city with a population of about 95,000 or so.

Behind my house there is an hispanic family, some white medical residents, and a black single women over 50. In my tiny culdesac we've got a biracial family and (I think) a Filipino family. I'm guessing on the Filipino's because I've never asked where they are from because I don't care.

If you keep your lawn mowed and your dog relatively quiet then you are a most welcome neighbor. Interestingly enough it is the Medical Resident couple who have the loud dog and who have pot parties on their deck at 3 AM. I don't mind the pot parties but if their loud talking wakes me up I turn on my deck light and they go inside.

One big thing about small towns (population 3,000 or less) is the lack of anonymity. This can be irritating. Personally I don't like everybody in my business. But I would not like to live in a rural setting. In general I like having neighbors close by.

Peoria is, as noted above, pretty large. I would say that the people from central Illinois are pretty good people, and while they might not all agree with you politically, most of them would be pretty cordial regardless of your blogging.

I grew up in the suburbs and now live in the city, and while I prefer the city, rural towns aren't bad places to live. You'll still get your department stores, your Borders, a multiplex cinema, a Container store, all that jazz. You just might have to drive 20 minutes to get to them all. And the downtowns of some of those rural towns are pretty picturesque. Not my ideal place to live (more driving, limited choices), but certainly has its charm.

Suburbs aren't too bad, depending on the suburb. Some of them still have appealing, walkable downtown areas. It's the exurbs that leave me cold.

I would not want to live in rural America because being the token Jew gets old really fast.

That's interesting, about suburban VA. Do you think it's because you're near the capital, or is there some other reason?

That has a lot to do with it, especially the billions of government contracting dollars that flow out of there. The DC metro area is one of the few with positive job growth. But I also think a lot of immigrants have a built-in bias for capital cities.

But I've been to the OC many times and your choice of food is really pretty decent. OK, Manhattan has a few more choices but I bet you have more sushi resturants close to home than I do.

I, on the other hand, could pretty much subsist on burgers and fries every day if it came down to it, so I'd do fine.

Why, the other day my vegetarian elitist wife and I were driving through rural South Carolina, and the dude behind the counter met her request for hot tea by pouring half a cup of iced tea, and adding hot water. Not the best cup of tea she's had, perhaps, but you have to salute the creativity and willingness to please!

And this really decrepit old dude even walked over and engaged us in conversation about vegetarianism. He himself felt that life without meat isn't worth living, and was engagingly curious about my wife's inconsistent willingness to wear leather shoes, and it was a good conversation.

Live in a borough in a medium-sized city and you get the best and worst of both worlds. I know my neighbors and my neighbors kids and everything is "just around the corner," but right now a crew is re-paving the neighborhood and I nod to the homeless on my way to the park each morning.

I, on the other hand, could pretty much subsist on burgers and fries every day if it came down to it, so I'd do fine.

Why, the other day my vegetarian elitist wife and I were driving through rural South Carolina, and the dude behind the counter met her request for hot tea by pouring half a cup of iced tea, and adding hot water. Not the best cup of tea she's had, perhaps, but you have to salute the creativity and willingness to please!

And this really decrepit old dude even walked over and engaged us in conversation about vegetarianism. He himself felt that life without meat isn't worth living, and was engagingly curious about my wife's inconsistent willingness to wear leather shoes, and it was a good conversation.

Vicente--I agree. I'm in NoVA too, and over the decades the Korean-American population here has really taken off because of the lure of it's proximity to DC. If you go back to the "old country" the capital (Seoul) tends to dominate the country, even though many of the "smaller" cities have a million or more people in them!

My sister-in-law from the NYC area has commented that the ethnic diversity in NoVA is much more integrated here than up there--more mixes of different ethnic businesses and restaurants within single malls or neighborhoods, whereas in the NYC area the enclaves are larger and more isolated.

I live in a town of 1,000 people. Amazingly, those 1,000 people are not all alike.

And no, thersites, I'd just as soon not walk around town and count "blackfaces". really. I think you might need something to cling to.

When I moved from a single family unit to a large apartment complex two decades ago, I became self-conscious of my new neighbors ability to watch me come and go. I have not lived in a small town (nor an urban city), but my folks were raised on farms with surrounding small towns and my relatives still live in them. The lack of anonymity would probably make me very self-conscious living in a small town. I think it would be better to live on the farm than in town.

Hm - I'm a pretty damned serious foodie, and I can't wait to move to a small town. Okay, most of rural America doesn't have great Thai food or any Ethiopian restaurants at all. But every time I get out to rural Massachusetts (yes, it exists), Vermont, New Hampshire or Maine, I try to find a farm and buy some eggs that taste likes eggs. Ditto milk. Raw honey's easy to come by, too. And it's not hard to find good meat, venison, beef jerky. I think you get the idea...

I love small towns r cities (under 60000); for example:

Evora (Alentejo in Portugal).

Siena (Tuscany).

These would suit me fine.

According to Wikipedia, their populations both are is under 56000.

4. I could not live in rural America and be happy.

I've lived in cities between 100K-400K in population, but did live for about twelve years in the sticks-a mile to the nearest home, three miles to the nearest store, eight miles from the nearest town of 400-but that was back in the '70s and '80s. I found the natives not to be that narrow minded THEN, or so it seemed. There was quite a few for real hippies that lived around there and and everybody seemed to get along OK. But, there was something that happened around 1987-1988 or thereabouts and it changed for the worse after that-hard to say what it was... something like a new 50's conformism.

bemused,
You misunderstand. It's not about "counting" black faces. It's about not seeing any at all. Or enough that people aren't so free with the n-word.

Maybe we were just really unlucky, but I don't think there's a program that lets you "test-drive" a community before you buy a house there.

A godless liberal blog? Where? (looking around)

I think this is more a contrarian, Mickey Kaus (and doesn't that sound so punning) blog.

And, I've never seen a straight-out atheism post here, Kevin, that I recall.

Combine those two facts with linking to Tyler Cowan, and we have your second entry for weakest post of the week.

If you want to see a real atheist-related post that gives Arianna Huffington a smackdown from the left, you can read something at an actual godless left-liberal blog.

I live on a gravel road in a (dry) rural county in the South that has no traffic lights, hospital, movie theater, or shopping center. Half of it's in the National Forest, and there are far more cows than people.

Everybody pretty much knows everybody else, or knows somebody who does. When my dog ran off chasing a deer last fall, my 85 year old neighbor found him by phoning everybody in the general direction he was last seen headed until she learned who'd taken him in. He was about 6 miles off, on the other side of the ridge. He was still wearing city tags, so the folks who had him figured somebody had abandoned him. Happens all the time out here. They were gonna give him a home.

Most people in the city I moved from assume the same kinds of things about my "redneck" (and black) neighbors that people on the Upper West Side of Manhattan assume about the rural South. You know, "Deliverance."

It's mostly superstition. I've never had an unpleasant encounter over religion or politics, or "lifestyle" or any of that. (OK, so I'm straight, married.) People mainly seem to assume that if we want to live here, we must value many of the same things they do--the natural world, dogs, horses, country things generally. So we must be alright. I guess if I insisted upon mocking the things most find sacred I could make enemies fast. But I've never felt the need. Not in person, anyway.

If I want to be surrounded by PhDs, there's a college town across the river.

As to big cities, I could happily live in London, I think. I feel trapped in New York. About 3 days is my limit in LA. My feeling is that if a place is bad for dogs and horses, it's worse for people. That said, we'd all live easier if we understood these are mostly matters of taste, not right and wrong.

I'm a gay man. If I ever want to meet another gay man who shares my interests (and then build a life with him without having to fight overt intolerance every day of my life), I have to live in a big city. It sucks -- I'd love to return to my suburban hometown in Florida, where the weather is beautiful and the people are friendly, but as far as I can see, the Floridian legal system has made it quite clear that they would prevent gay folks from entering the state at all if they could. Some of the folks on the ground are much more tolerant, sure. But not enough of them. (My home district sent Katherine Harris to Congress.)

So I'm afraid that I, too, could not be happy living in rural America, and the odds of that changing in my lifetime are still pretty slim.

I live in a town of about 2500 deep that's very white, very Christian, very rural, and very conservative. Fortunately, there's small university town 10 minutes away - but it's pretty conservative itself for a college town. I'm not crazy about the town, but I've met some very cool and very interesting people. Even my more "typical" rural cosnervative neighbors are very nice in spite of all the signs in our yard around election time and our clearly not being from around here. We go to one of the local dive bars on occasion, always make friends, and only once ever had any problem as a result of talking politics - and that guy was just looking for trouble in general and was quickly tossed out of the bar.

We have some decent food in the college town - we just got an Indian restaurant!!! - but if you like to cook, it's amazing. Duck eggs, true free range chickens, homemade butter from grass-fed cows, home-made goat cheese, and high quality organic produce are highlights of almost every farmer's market trip in the summer.

I'd much rather be in San Franciso or Portland, but the "heartland" has its charms too.

For an affectionate take on smalltown life and idiosyncracies, please see Lars and the Real Girl, up for 2007 screenplay Oscar, IIRC.

And Marilynne Robinson's Gilead (Pulitzer in 2005?) captures the pathos (and for foodies the difference between a Presbyterian and a Methodist casserole).

But these two stories are set in old radical abolitionist enclaves of Iowa and Kansas, in the case of Gilead, or (in Lars and the Real Girl) in the northern reaches of the Midwest, with their pragmatic Scandinavian Lutheran denizens. There are some LOL funny scenes in the church basement about the appearance of Lar's inflatable sex doll.

oops. Make that "Lars's . . . ."

hey Kevin, just wanted to say what a nice, contemplative post...

Man, of all the insane reasons not to want to live in the country, inferior food has got to be it. Gastronomically, even low-income people live like kings six months of the year here in the north, much longer down south. Ever had an egg still warm from the hen? How about peas or corn picked literally minutes before eating? Potatoes and beets dug from your own ground? If you've never had these things really fresh, you have no idea.

Good Indian or even Chinese food is hard to come by, it's true. But it honestly seems a hell of a lot less important when you're surrounded by great fresh food, fresh air and beautiful land. (America is a drop-dead GORGEOUS country!)

Jethro says, "People mainly seem to assume that if we want to live here, we must value many of the same things they do--the natural world, dogs, horses, country things generally. So we must be alright." As a suburban ex-patriate, I've found the same thing. Local folks assume I'm good people because I had the sense to flee the suburbs and come here to live.

And FWIW, my small (1,200) nearly all-white farming town comfortably elected a gay man with two adopted African-American little daughters to the school committe without a shred of controversy.

There are an awful lot of false stereotypes about rural towns in the comments here, and it makes me sad.

Well, like I said, maybe we were just unlucky. But I'm not coming from stereotypes, I'm coming from experience.

About a week after we moved here, my wife went out for a walk. Someone down the street called the cops, and they came and "checked her out." The officers were polite, even apologetic, but still...

About six months later, my sister came for a visit. She went out for a walk. She came back and exclaimed what a friendly neighborhood this is.

My wife has twice been mistaken for a maid.

On three separate occasions, she's been called a n****r. One time, the word was in a sentence that started with "Kill."

Are we bitter? Yes. Am I humiliated? Yes. I'm the f*cking moron who assured her "it can't be that bad. This is Massachusetts." So I guess I was guilty of stereotyping. I thought everyone here was liberal.

David Byrne said much the same some 30 years ago...

I wouldn't live there if you paid me.
I couldn't live like that, no siree!
I couldn't do the things the way those people do.
I couldn't live there if you paid me to.

I guess it's healthy, I guess the air is clean.
I guess those people have fun with their neighbors and friends.
Look at that kitchen and all of that food.
Look at them eat it' guess it tastes real good.

They grow it in the farmlands
And they take it to the stores
They put it in the car trunk
And they bring it back home

And I say...

I wouldn't live there if you paid me.

Everything I ever needed to know about life I learned from punk, new wave and progressive rock.

I grew up in a small Southern town (5,000 pop. seat of a huge county of 50,000). In the South - and I suspect much of the West and Midwest - small town does not mean "100,000 population located 15 minutes from the local Borders." Small town means a handful of restaurants, a Wal-Mart and at least an hour drive to somewhere that had a mall.

It was dull, but tolerable. Lots of drugs and drinking among the teenage set, but not much violence at the time. The county was a cesspit, but the town itself was nice - as the doctors and lawyers had enough nice houses to offset the poverty around them.

Since I left, the regional bank closed, the factories closed, most of the local businesses closed and a massive, 24-hour Super Wal-Mart has set up shop. Now, it's impoverished, dangerous and drug ridden. It's pretty much meth and pain pill central.

There's a huge difference between the truly rural and towns that are essentially suburbs. The latter is liveable, but the former is rapidly turning into the Third World in this country.

This is Massachusetts

I have never been to MA, but on TV I have seen Bostonians yelling the N word at Black children who were being bused to desegregated schools. Northeasterners don't seem to have an inhibition about using racial epithets.

I lived for several years on 43 acres 10 miles outside a central-Colorado town that had no stoplights. I'm talking the boondocks, where the hoot owls date the chickens — more cows than people and more churches than bars or liquor stores (always a warning sign). One of the dude wranglers had an excellent if temperamental French chef (who now runs a restaurant in town) and many of the neighbors were accomplished amateur cooks; some are growing their own protein and produce. It was rare to have a bad meal during the frequent potlucks, although fetching organic ingredients entailed a 110-mile U-turn at a minimum (the growing season at 8800 feet is a tad short.) And the so-called rednecks were some of the best neighbors a guy could have. I can't count the times some ol' boy stopped his pickup while I was fixing a flat on my bicycle to ask whether I needed a lift or some tools. Now that I live in a mini-metropolitan area, passing motorists are more inclined to hurl invective or actual objects. The Whole Paycheck is a good deal closer, though.

You're right, Brojo. But we lived in Cambridge, which a friend of mine has described as "an island surrounded on four sides by reality" and the busing episodes were well in the past.

I think it's called willful amnesia. Mrs. T. has graciously forgiven me.
On the plus side, the food out here is sometimes great. We grow it ourselves.

I was born in Peoria, both sides of the family are from there. Both grandfathers worked for Caterpillar, and Pop did for a while around the time I was born so the family would get the union benefits. It's still a blue-collar town compared to the thousands of square miles of corn around it, and used to be reliably Democratic (though it's closer to split in the post-union era). You can write a godless liberal blog there, but you probably wouldn't want to stray too far out of the city.

. . . Whole Paycheck . . .

good one.

I tried living in a real big city (Washington D.C.) after spending my whole life in a medium city (Kansas City) and college in a smallish city (Springfield, Mo.) surrounded by tiny little towns.

I hated D.C.

Yes, the Metro is a great public transportation system, there are plenty of things to do at all hours, and it's close to the "action" (the east coast).

But it was just too fast, too cutthroat, too expensive ... just too much a lot of things.

While I'd love to visit NY, I'm a small town kinda guy. And I'm okay with that.

Thersites, I'm not sure what your point is. If it's that there are Republican pockets in blue states: Sure that's true, and everyone knows it to be true, to- but I don't see what it has to do with the point / the argument I was making.

For the record, I live in a mixed-race area in a suburban town in a blue state (I don't get what your point is about where I live, either, by the way-- but I'll bite). I've lived in a couple other (more urban) cities in this state in the past. Presently, one of my next-door neighbors is black, an Italian plumber lives next door to me, traditional Jews live across the street from me, and Indians live across the street from me. Black people walk down my street maybe every day. Elsewhere on my street, there is another black family, and several other Indian, Hispanic, and Jewish families. Black, Hispanic, Jewish, other white and Indian families live all throughout my neighborhood and the surrounding towns, and the public high school I attended in my town when I went there seemed like it was almost 50% minority while I was going there.

Anyway, America is about immigration and diversity, and it has been since 1776, and since the first shots of the Revolutionary war (a war fought on our side by Irish, German, Poles, Blacks, Scots, French, Dutch, etc., in addition to Anglo-Saxons) were fired in battles up here in the northeast. Our culture here in the blue northeast has defined and driven the culture of the rest of the country, and provided the people who founded many communities in the more western and southern states.

Thersites, I'm not sure what your point is.

I meant your point in your original response to me. I didn't really read your other comments, but they sound like they relate really exceptional examples of open racism, the like of which I haven't heard of in a while.

Oh, yeah, I forgot the Asians. We've got east Asians living in at least four or five houses on my 86-house street.

Kevin:

I used to work in Irvine (live in "southcoast metro" & visit LA on weekends. now that i live in LA (SW of Farmer's Market) it's a very different impression. Had never noticed on weekends that LA - for the most part - has not incorporated Left Turn lanes/signals. Never noticed how narrow so many side streets are.

Living is quite different from visiting on weekends.

Swan,

I guess at the end of the day my point is that you don't have to be in "small, western or southern towns" to experience bigotry, which is what you seemed to be implying.

But if you're on close enough terms with any of your black neighbors, you might ask whether they've experienced racism "the like of which you haven't heard of in a while." The answer might surprise you. This shit doesn't always make the news.

Or maybe Mrs. T and I just made a really bad choice of towns to live in.

I'd love to return to my suburban hometown in Florida, where the weather is beautiful and the people are friendly

Haven't you heard of Wilton Manors?

"Wilton Manors ranks 3rd in the U.S. for its percentage of gays as a proportion of total population. Wilton Manors has approximately 1270% more gay men per capita than the national average."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilton_Manors%2C_FL

Chris and others,

Not all small towns are ignorant or intolerant. If you are gay and want to live in a jurisdiction where civil unions are allowed, where can you go? Vermont. Our largest city (where I am sitting right now) has 38,000 people in it, so it is all small town here in Vt.

In my son's 1st grade class, he has two fellow students with 2 same sex parents. My son thinks it is all perfectly normal, which is how we want him to grow up: tolerant and respectful.

We also have great restaurants and a lively cultural scene in VT. Plus, the cost of living is pretty reasonable compared to big metro areas. I was living as an expatriate in Moscow and decided to move to Vermont over the more obvious choices of DC or NYC (I am an East Coast boy) and we have not regretted it.

I grew up in a rural area, and I think there are a lot of positives about rural life, but the only way you could get me out to the country again is if I didn't have to go grocery shopping or to work. I'm not interested in spending a significant amount of my waking hours traveling from one place to another. I love that I have a nice market, a pharmacy, a hardware store, a package store, all within a 5 minute walk. If I want to walk 15 minutes, I have restaurants: Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, greasy spoon diner, Italian. If I want to walk 20 minutes, there are two chain supermarkets, and lots more of everything else I've already mentioned. Where I grew up, it was 25 minutes each way to get to a grocery store.

Good post but it won't play in Peoria. I mean seriously, you live in Orange county and worry that people in Peoria are too conservative ???

I have to walk through the woods to get my mail. I wash dishes with 180 degree view of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the snowy mountains of Vancouver Island beyond. I came from Pasadena and I loved my city, but rural Washington is heaven--or as near as I'm likely to get. I miss the Norton Simon Museum, the Huntington Gardens and all the great restaurants in Pasadena, but then I do the dishes. Or go out and get the mail.

As mentioned before, Peoria is not a small town. It's got at least one university, and over 100,000 people. IF it's anything like Champaign/Urbana, it's got multiple locations for all major fast food locations, and a bunch of smaller, more regional ones. It's got a multi-plex. It's got all your major chain stores like Best Buy, Home Depot, etc. It's really like living in a suburb of a big city, without the major cultural components and professional sports teams.

My dad grew up in a small town. It has about 5,000 residents, and has had that many for the last 60 years or so. It's in Eastern Montana, on the ND border, and in that area, 5,000 people is practically a metropolis. It has a movie theater (one screen). It has *a* McDonald's. When I needed dress socks for a cousin's wedding 20 years ago, we had to drive to Williston, ND, an hour away. If you want to go to Best Buy or Home Depot, you have to drive to Billings, about 240 miles away.

Kevin, I know you were making a play on the 'play in Peoria' line, but middle America does not equal small town America. If you think Peoria is a small town, you need to visit some small towns.

I grew up in an east coast metropolis.

I lived for four years in a town of 10,000 people in the geographic center of Iowa.

The culture is completely different. I'm not talking about blue man group or the museum of fine arts -- I'm talking about the details of relationships and values that define how we experience our lives as social animals.

It's not obvious - but if you live there long enough, particularly if you work there - you will notice. If you are female, you'll probably notice twice as fast.

I live in NJ, and I love NJ, but it's too damn expensive to live here. I'm thinking of moving to Columbus, Ohio, which I've heard is one of the most affordable cities to live in, in the country. Judging from the rents there, it's true. The two-bedroom apt. I'm in now costs $1,050/month. The same apt. in Columbus, from what I've seen in my research so far, could be had for half that number.

A two-bedroom apartment for $1,050!?!?!? That's such a great deal!!! I would love a deal like that in San Francisco.

I grew up in an east coast metropolis.

I lived for four years in a town of 10,000 people in the geographic center of Iowa.

The culture is completely different.

I'm generally an urban easterner (having lived in Syracuse, metro Washington, D.C., a close-in Philadelphia suburb and a few New Jersey towns near NYC), but two of the best years of my life were spent in Ames, Iowa (which is in the center of the state but has more than 10,000 people). Of course, it's a college town, which helps; you have culture, libraries, public radio and such.

I live ten miles east of Austin, Texas on 11 acres with a pond. My neighbors are brown, black, and white with a minimum of Republicans. If I want culture I drive into town and it is closer than when I lived in the suburbs.

Living in a rural area is great if you pick the right place. Today I was less than ten feet from a four foot cottonmouth. We looked each other over and went about out respective business. The wild flowers are in bloom and life is good.

One of the things I would miss most if I were to move to a rural area would be access to good public libraries.

The food gag is lame. My sister-in-law lives in Southern California and the quality and variety of food she has available are, compared to us in Flyoverland, crap. She can, if she drives an hour or two, find better food with more variety than we can get in the winter, but from late Spring through mid-Fall, our farmer's markets (3 minutes from my front door) erase that and give us the advantage. Southern California, as was pointed out in "Chinatown", is a desert community and that goes for more than the dirt beneath your all's feet. If you're shopping in a typical Southern California supermarket like the kind you find out Foothill or Baseline or so, you're eating worse food than we get in the sticks.

I lived in Corpus Christi, Texas. It was (and remains) so culturally backward that when I started flying east to school, I found that the airport newstand at DFW had a bigger selection than any bookstore in Corpus.

When I return to visit my parents, I see that things have improved since the 1970s. The cheese selection at the HEB grocery is OK. There are a handful of decent ethnic restaurants. You can get good coffee without too much trouble.

That said, without Amazon and Netflix and the internet more generally, towns like Corpus would be living hells. It takes 2 or 3 days her for me to how astonishingly better and more agreeable life in big-city America is.

If you (and your lifestyle choices) are at all non-normative, you really shouldn't live anywhere besides a relative handful of big cities. And maybe a dozen or so college towns. Yeah, your neighbors in Corpus or Peoria or Yakima may tolerate you and leave you alone.

But you're going to have a hard time finding people like you who share your interests.

If you're gay, if you're a single well-educated Yuppie who'd like to date around before settling down with another well-educated Yuppie, if you're a chowhound who likes eating out, if you're a million other things that by big city standards are not especially exotic, why on earth would you consider moving to, say, Peoria? Or Corpus?

I'm not the foodie that Cowen is (though, as a DC area resident, I periodically take advantage of his restaurant guide), and I could live on burgers, PB&J, and so forth maybe 2/3 of the time.

But in that other 1/3 of the time, I want Indian, Thai, Ethiopian, Greek, Middle Eastern, Mexican, and whatnot. And if I have to go without decent ethnic food for too long, life just isn't as good anymore.

I was in the same situation with music about 10 years ago. I could listen to classic rock and oldies maybe 2/3 of the time. But in the other 1/3, I needed to hear some stuff I hadn't heard over and over again. (Lately that's swung sharply the other way - even the better classic-rock songs are starting to just plain wear out their welcome after 30-40 years of repetitions. If I hear, say, "Bargain" by the Who, which is really a very good song, I hit the button to change the station.)

The comments immediately above me apparently have been made by blind people.

My city isn't particularly small (~200,000), but it has Thai, Vietnamese, Carribean, Mexican, classic French, Indian, Korean, Morrocan, and Cuban restaurants. Digital has made radio the same everywhere. There are gay bars (plural). People keep having babies so heterosexual people are hooking up. Marriages aren't between dewy naifs anymore so I assume easy pre-marriage fooling around is to blame. My wife orders from chic stores online so the latest fashions are delivered to her in days.

thersites,

Are we bitter? Yes. Am I humiliated? Yes. I'm the f*cking moron who assured her "it can't be that bad. This is Massachusetts." So I guess I was guilty of stereotyping. I thought everyone here was liberal.

I am really sorry to hear this. If you tell me the town and the people I will go there and tell them off to their faces. I'm serious. I'm a big white dude and I'm old enough to not care a rip what people think of me and bigotry really burns my bottom. I'm sick to the core of that excrement and willing to get in people's faces about it. One thing I've noticed about small towns is that they are pretty tolerant of bad behavior as long as it comes from one of their own.

As I said earlier, all I really care about in my neighbors is that they mow their lawn now and then and keep their dog relatively quiet. Oh, and there was a stoner bass player who insisted on playing his bass, loud, in the middle of the night sitting in his underwear in front of an open picture window. Happily he never made a house payment and was gone within the year. If you interrupt my sleep, especially on a week night, I'm gonna be irritated.

Tripp: all I really care about in my neighbors is that they mow their lawn now and then

Well, then maybe you wouldn't want me for a neighbor. ;)

I appreciate the thought. Seriously. Because one the worst parts of the whole situation is the denial and/or silence that ensues when we try to talk to otherwise well-meaning people about this stuff.

thersites,

Feeling isolated sucks.

But you better start mowing your lawn or I'm calling you a redneck hillbilly. I'm just saying.

tripp, it's hard to maneuver the mower around all the cars in the yard.

Auto, I can't answer about Corpus or Peoria. But we moved to suburbia looking for :
a) space
b) fresh air
c) a place we could afford that would be larger than a closet.

and in spite of the drawbacks, there are plenty of days it's been worth it.

I remember driving in the country with my Grandparents and whenever we'd come upon a junk yard my Grandma would say "must be a ball game." To her the sight of all the junkers parked in a field reminded her of when she was a girl and baseball was played out in a mowed field with no bleachers and no parking lots.

That was in Iowa a looong time ago. Thanks for the memories.

thersites,

Reading this post this morning in The Field, reminded me of your upthread remark about Massachusetts. He writes in part:

Simply put, while most of Rural America has proved already immune to underhanded attempts to divide Americans along racial lines in the 2008 Democratic primaries and caucuses, the mountainous inland along the Appalachian trail remains susceptible. It's generally racially segregated. And yes, I concur with David Sirota's findings that white voters in racially segregated regions - just look at Massachusetts (I could write a book about my years amidst the unspoken Apartheid there) - tend to support Clinton whereas the supposed "racists" of the South give greater support to Obama.

The correlation of the two maps (showing Obama's strength among rural voters) is fascinating as are the analyses of "code-inflected blathering" about race in the race, blathering that appears not to work in rural America.

Depends, I think, on where your piece of rural America is.

Mine is in coastal Northern California, and just about as good as it gets, weather-wise, recreation-wise, AND food-wise.

I'm from small town nothern Ohio, however, and though I love the family and friends I have back there, I wouldn't want to move back.

Bad weather, bad food, nothing to do.

Guess that makes me an elitist...

A two-bedroom apartment for $1,050!?!?!? That's such a great deal!!! I would love a deal like that in San Francisco.

Of course. But one would expect a two-bedroom apt in San Francisco to cost a lot more than a two-bedroom apt in Belleville, New Jersey. I am about 10 miles from New York City, and if I were to tell a Manhattan apartment dweller about my $1,050 a month two-bedroom apartment, he or she would react in exactly the same way you did. The more relevant comparison, I think, would be the cost of a two-bedroom apartment in *Manhattan* versus one in San Francisco.

Cal Gal,

A coworker came from Ohio and claimed the sky was bluer there. Bluer compared to rural Minnesota. I kid you not. It takes all kinds. Personally when all my frat brothers were taking jobs down in the Sun belt I headed North to Minnesota. Being of Polish/German descent I dislike sweating and humidity. Two-a-day football practices in August just about killed me. I love me tropical beaches, mountains, and Minnesota winter. Gloomy overcast skies I can do without. The same with snakes and big bugs.

Man, you know, homo sapiens? Well, he is a suburban animal. Everybody knows that. And the ideal existence is suburban.